


oh the heart (it hides such unimaginable things)

by chocolateandmurder



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: Aka the school from love4eva, Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Analysis, F/F, and also having a crisis, its hard fighting a war when you're tired but also gay, mentions of deaths but its a fantasy au so that like. a concept only
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 01:10:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15401652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chocolateandmurder/pseuds/chocolateandmurder
Summary: “No” says Yves, feeling worlds and universes collide, then crack and fall apart, the fragile structure of Eden crashing and burning. She did this.She did this.“I don’t want to say goodbye” she gasps out, “Not now”. Not like this.There’s no answer but Yves still tries. “Chuu” Yves shouts out the best she can.”Chuu-I didn’t mean-you have to understand-Chuu” she screams one last time, anguished, and then the other girl disappears from view as she falls down, down,down.





	oh the heart (it hides such unimaginable things)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heartlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartlet/gifts).



> This whole thing is set in a war, so there are mentions of death and also suicide, but its also a magical setting so death is a complicated concept. That being said, this IS an angst fic so please be careful if you're very sensitive to upsetting content. Thank you SO MUCH to @skiespjm on tumblr for betaing!!!

“No” says Yves, feeling worlds and universes collide, then crack and fall apart, the fragile structure of Eden crashing and burning. She did this.  _ She did this.  _ “I don’t want to say goodbye” she gasps out, “Not now”.  _ Not like this.  _

 

There’s no answer but Yves still tries. “Chuu” Yves shouts out the best she can.”Chuu-I didn’t mean-you have to understand-Chuu” she screams one last time, anguished, and then the other girl disappears from view as she falls down, down,  _ down _ . 

 

*

40 days earlier, Dimension #0.34648, or Eden 

 

Eden is stunning. Yves expected as much, considering how much blood, sweat and tears it took to find the dimension, but when she first steps onto the meadow and collapses, a stranger’s arms out to pick her up, she still has time to take in the shock of blue sky, rolling hills, and  the emerald, vibrant green of the grass that she falls headfirst in, tickling her face. Its the atmosphere of the place that she registers the most before it all goes black, something about the smell of the soft grass and the earth, the perfume of flowers in the breeze, the sun casting warm rays on her back. She closes her eyes. She’s made it. 

 

When she wakes up, she’s lying in the softest bed she’s been in for years, dressed in white, her meagre possessions placed neatly on the table next to her. The room is equally, if not more beautifully done up than the fields outside: marble floors that gleam from polish, soft teal walls and a high ceiling where if she squints she can make out a chandelier in the darkness, glittering with crystals. Her head is spinning, which is natural considering she’s barely eaten these last few weeks, too busy pouring over complicated texts on dimension hopping. 

 

Ever since history can remember, time has been split into multiple parallel worlds, all loosely stitched together and intersecting in various weak spots, like intersecting spider webs thanks to a special mix of magic and physics implemented by humans millenia ago. Some places are for everyone, the equivalent of cities, thousands stopping by and intermingling. Some are lonely and desolate, hard to find and with finicky magic that would prevent you from leaving. Eden is a special one of its own, almost impossible to find, a mysterious mathematical anomaly in itself wherein you could only get in on particular days at particular points that span all the multiverses. Yves has spent years hearing people even deny the fact that it exists, far too strange and mysterious to conceive as real. There is no real civilization in Eden, no government, no industries, instead, there are young girls from fourteen onwards, powerful travelers in their own right, who are housed and sheltered by a group of teachers, fed, clothed, and cared for, but most importantly, trained on how to use their skills in the best way to navigate the multiverses.

 

In the best of times, Eden would be convenient, a beautiful destination for people to stop and learn with no worries, to build their skills and return to their home dimensions. For the last decade however, its become a refuge instead; a centre for young girls to flee thanks to bizarre anomalies in the timelines, with dimensions suddenly crashing, spots of transport suddenly freezing, people getting trapped in the spaces between worlds. She’s heard stories of multiple people dying attempting to make it to make it to Eden out of desperation, all their hard work failing them thanks to a split millisecond where the timeline suddenly changed. The last few years have only gotten worse, not because of more anomalies, but because desperation had finally lead to violence, war blooming across multiple timelines, death and confusion everywhere as people are killed out of suspicion, desperation, or simply thanks to rips in the fabric of time. She supposes why everyone in Eden holds onto the place so tightly;  after a few decades, every girl is allowed the choice to leave, but absolutely no one does. 

 

Yves didn’t know what she expected. She didn’t even expect to get in, not really, so every time she looks out of a window and sees the sprawling fields around the mansion that she’s now supposed to be calling home, the stunning blue of the sky, and the feels the warm and the breeze, she freezes, like any second now she’s going to wake up from this dream. It’s so much quieter than the last dimension that she ran from, though she’s trying not to think about it. 

 

*

“You’ll be more than welcome here, I promise” says one of the teachers who’d greeted her with a  _ just call me miss  _ even before Yves spoke. She had a smile that looked like it was etched on permanently, though Yves couldn’t tell if it was because she was always happy, or if she was good at hiding what she was actually feeling. Right now, though, she needed to be equally good, if not better, so she held her head high and smiled pleasantly, disarmingly. 

 

“I already feel welcome” she lies through her teeth, “thank you so much for having me”.The second lie is harder than the first. 

 

She fashions her expression into something cold and confident as she’s lead through the halls, heart pounding as every single turn leads to a room grander and grander than the others, marble being switched out for black obsidian, gold lining every furnishing, tapestries more beautiful than anything she’s ever seen before hanging on the walls. She tells herself there’s no point giving into the feeling of not belonging-even if it is absolutely a hundred percent true-as she listens to the teacher explain that all the girls were housed in a mansion of sorts, with separate bedrooms and bathrooms, and they would now spend their days in special classrooms and a gigantic library, all holding treasures that had been salvaged from the war. When she catches a glimpse outside one of the windows, she can see what seems to be an even more infinite number of fields and trees, all stretching out in every direction. 

 

The rumors were true she thinks, storing the information away carefully in her mind, Eden really did consist of nothing more than this school, if it could be called one. 

 

They stop suddenly in front of a door, painted deep blue, a polished black handle sticking out of it. “This will be the room you’re staying in” says the teacher pleasantly. Her fingers look so pale in comparison to the rich dark wood as she curls her fingers around, and Yves has a moment to take in the shock of contrast-the cool colour of the blue, the inverse of black, the shock of white in the dark hallway, before the door swings open and she throws her hands up to shield herself. 

_ Sunlight.  _ So much goddamn sunlight. Its been so long since Yves has been in a room with huge open windows built to let the light in. In the war curtains are a necessity, if not the last resort to minimise the chances of someone finding you and hurting you with your guard down. The infirmary or hospital room or whatever its called is practically underground, probably so that the newer girls can recover with minimal intrusion. The room she’s been put in is East facing though, and in the late morning its flooded with light. Yves blinks several times to reacquaint herself, and then she makes out the shape of another student standing in the middle. 

 

“Chuu?” says the teacher at the girl, genuinely sounding surprised. Well.This clearly isn’t how introductions are supposed to go in this world then. 

 

“Hi Miss” says the girl, smiling amiably. She hasn’t moved yet, so she clearly hasn’t been caught doing something wrong. Yet. Yves feels like she’s taking everything in hyper specific detail, the way she always has when she feels anxious. The girl is shorter than her, lanky, wearing a school uniform that makes her look younger than she actually is, face round and squishy. Long auburn hair. A single scrape on her leg, which Yves immediately becomes fixated on. It looks like the kind of injury you got when tripping, but she refuses to be any less suspicious. 

 

“I heard someone new was coming, so I thought I could come welcome her” explains the girl, smiling ever further. Her teeth are slightly uneven, pout girlish. Yves feels like she’s meeting someone younger than her, a bubbly, if slightly perplexing girl that her more outgoing younger friends would have bonded with and she’d been slightly confused by, instead of what she presumes is a powerful magic user. Maybe says the mean part of her brain, that acknowledges how dead tired she is, maybe some other girls got lucky. 

 

“Well” says the teacher, smile settling back into place. “That’s very nice of you, Chuu, its good to see you participating more!” she turns to Yves who immediately snaps a smile back into place. God, this is becoming a bad comedy. “Yves, this is Chuu, one of our favourite students. She has a section of a floor entirely to herself, thanks to how hard she works, but today, she’s been kind enough to volunteer to help you out”.

 

Yves decides two things at once, as she shakes hands with this Chuu girl, who smiles even brighter and looks even more vibrant up close, as though the sunlight is a natural part of her. One, there are hierarchies in the last refuge in the biggest war humanity has ever fought, and if she wants enough space to carry out her impossible scheme, then she’ll have to work doubly as hard to get to where she wants to. Secondly, there’s no way Chuu isn’t sniffing out the competition, trying to carefully decide whether or not the new girl will upset her authority. She’s  _ sure  _ of it. 

 

[Except Chuu doesn’t stay to pry other than to explain to Yves where she can find curtains if the sun gets too bright, and then she leaves after the two of them have finished hanging them up, like they’re something.]

  
  
  


*

The next day, there's a gong sometime in the morning (though she can't figure out when exactly; the watch on her wrist fell apart when she entered through the dimension and she forgot to ask for another one after that), and she sits up on her bed, shaking slightly from the fact that she hasn't slept a wink the whole night.    
  
(Hands crawling up to her, wrapping their skinny fingers around her throat, inhuman wailing filling her ears, skies that are horrifyingly, unnaturally blood red. Then sudden shifts, like the dimensions are cracking all over again, something Yves hates with a burning passion, makes her heart seize up in her throat and her eyes fill up with tears, before everything disappears yet again, and then suddenly, a quiet moment in a bowling alley, a hand in hers, the rickety steps of her apartment, peace. It makes fear slick up her spine far worse than anything else)   
  
(She slept for a little while, and then her own nightmares chased her out of the bed, so instead she spends the whole night exploring the house instead, staining her socks as she slid around wordlessly as she could, keeping mental notes of everything possible)   
  
That day, she's still not certain of where she should start her search, but she's more than preoccupied trying to learn the ins and outs of the place. In the morning, she's taken to a long  room with equally long tables, where all the other girls, dressed in the same school uniforms, sit down at the table. Yves isn't hungry; she had some bread before passing through the dimensions and slept in the infirmary, which means that she has way more rest than she's ever needed. Still, she sits forward imperceptibly, eager to see food if not taste it, already anticipating the slices of bread they can all munch on without thinking about it, the staple food across all timelines.    
  
Instead, pristine white plates are passed along down the table, and then more of the teachers-all dressed in white aprons-come by, wearing gloves, steaming serving dishes in front of them. The entire room smells like things Yves can't even remember; sizzling meat, eggs, mayonnaise. Her stomach rumbles so loudly several of the girls glance up at her and then look away, clearly embarrassed to have noticed.    
  
There's sausages, fried eggs, and baked beans served on each and every plate, no exceptions. And there's bread too, more bread than any of them could ever need, more than Yves could imagine she would see in one place, and everywhere she looks, she can see the other girls helping themselves like its perfectly normal, ripping chunks apart, leaving crumbs all over the table.    
  
Her stomach bottoms out. Something about this scene makes her feel like she's on the verge of hyperventilating, and she's ready to hate herself over it; how the hell is she supposed to accomplish anything she's set out to do in this dimension if she can't even eat?  _ What is the point of knowing anything if she can't even pretend to be a human being normal enough to sit down and eat something _ , she screams at herself internally,  _ it’s so irrational and pointless and stupid _ , but yet she can feel the familiar panic around food, the bile rising in her gut.   
  
"Are you okay?" whispers Chuu, next to her. 

 

She snaps around so quickly its a miracle that the other students don't notice again; the food is distracting enough this time. She'd been so focused on what’s on her plate that she didn't even notice Chuu settling down in the seat next to her, a small helping of beans on the plate in front of her.    
  
Yves struggles to keep her voice steady; no point being beaten on the first day. "Yeah I'm fine" she says non committedly, but the stiffness in her tone and wobbliness of her lower lip gives it away. This is so humiliating. She's going to be called out on the first day for not belonging, over something as stupid as breakfast.    
  
Chuu doesn't seem to want to raise her voice though, instead, her brows furrow uncharacteristically serious, and her eyes flicker to the helpings of food on her plate back to Yves's face.    
  
There's silence for a few tense seconds, and then Yves covers her face with her hands and takes a few deep breaths, knowing she's being watched, knowing she's losing anyway. Chuu takes one of those hands in hers-her fingers are strangely rough, for a girl so youthful looking-and then leans forward.    
  
"What food do you want, Yves?" she whispers, low enough for no one else to hear. They're so close, Yves can see how long Chuu's eyelashes are.    
  
"Bread" says Yves, not thinking. "I just-I can't eat-I just want bread"   
  
A lot happens during the rest of the day, but the one memory that Yves remembers most vividly is Chuu just flicking her hand over Yves plate and then everything disappearing to be replaced by a single loaf of bread, nowhere as bad and grubby as what she was used to, but definitely nowhere as lovely as the bread served in Eden.    
  
She thinks about it over and over again, as she's lead to hall after hall filled with polished wooden desks for the students to sit at, and manuscripts to study from, that everyone had assumed had been lost to the time wars. She thinks about it over and over again as she lays down in bed that night.    
  
Spontaneous, effortless time manipulation, and that too, carrying something from dimension to dimension. It would have taken Yves weeks, if not months, to try and come close to something like that, and then she would have been exhausted for hours afterwards. Chuu got her bread in a second, and then immediately went back to eating, like nothing had happened. 

 

[She’d given Yves a little smile though, hadn’t asked any questions, and Yves had been mortified to realise how much she loved Chuu’s little crooked teeth, how pretty her the shape of her mouth was]    
  
_ Holy fuck _ , thinks Yves, as she lies awake at night, staring at the curtains on the edge of her bed, Chuu is more powerful than anything else in the damn house. 

  
  
*   
  
On the fourth day, one of the teachers- and Yves still can't really tell them apart, which is creepy-comes into the breakfast room with a somber look on her face.    
  
"Students" she says, hands clasped together in front of her, "Your teachers have just received news that dimension 0.445 is no longer accessible"    
  
To be honest, Yves expected that. Something odd's been going on with dimension for the last few weeks, and Yves has made note of that. Right now though, she watches the faces of one of the girls crumple, the other girls rushing to stroke her hair and put their arms around her, crowding her, offering her comfort. Chuu gets up too, and that’s when Yves realised that she probably should as well, so she gets up and puts her hand on the girl's shoulder, barely comfort, but more contact than she's been allowed for a long long time. She doesn't know the other girls name, but she probably had a family there, a home, nothing she can access until the crashes in the timeline right themselves.    
  
It rains that day. Relentlessly. Yves goes to class and struggles to take notes on the physics of time manipulation over the sound of water cascading off the windows with more force than she would have thought possible. In that night as she's sneaking around again, finally having figured out that there are portions of the library students aren't allowed to touch in their classes, she listens to the sound of water, pounding against the halls with vengeance, almost like a primal scream.    
  
*   
  
Its morning. She gets woken up this time, after a whole night of sleep, completely uninterrupted. When she opens her eyes though, instead of the alarm she'd requested waking her up, there's a whole congregation of girls standing by.   
  
"Is everything okay?" asks Yves, thinking of the hair brush under her pillow which barely qualifies as a weapon.    
  
The girls don't say anything. They don't make any move to acknowledge that she's spoken. Instead, they continue staring at her with identical expressions of disgust, and Yves knows somehow, deep in her gut that she's been spotted. That this is it, that it’s all over.    
  
There's pin drop silence in the room, except the sound of her beating heart, loud enough to echo off the floorboards, the walls, the ceiling, loud enough to make the chandeliers in the infirmary shake. Nothing moves, breathes, or speaks other than her. She can feel herself trembling all over. She waits for grief to grab her by both shoulders, for her tongue to betray her, for someone to walk forward and knock her out, but instead the shaking just gets louder. The wind outside is howling, slamming against the windows, and she realises with a start, that the entire house is shaking, being ripped off its hinges, tipping over and slamming headfirst into the ground, taking them with them. 

  
One girl steps forward. It’s the same girl who was crying the day before, and the tears still stain her face. "You did this" she says, voice cracking and spluttering with grief, entirely unrecognisable.    
  
She did. She did do this. It's what she came here for. It was her intention all along. She even wanted to die along with it. So why is she mourning?   
  
The girls break their rows, almost  like Moses parting the Dead Sea, to then reveal Chuu, and there's something different about the girl now. Her hair is darker, face more sallow, skin too pale.    
  
Yves suddenly remembers how powerful she is, how much Eden probably needs her.    
  
She opens her mouth.    
  
Everything collapses. 

 

*   
  
Then Yves wakes up.    
  
She wakes up in her bed, entirely alone, the room completely dark, and she clutches her chest for ten minutes, listening to the sound of her heart beating away, frantic, but completely hers, confined to her body. Its pin drop silent as she gets up to search the school as usual in the dead of the night, her legs still shaking.    
  
The next day in class, she's exhausted and sleep deprived as usual, but when there's a special lesson on the history of dimensions and she sees Chuu sitting alone in the back, and she thinks-well she's not sure what she thinks. She thinks Chuu is so goddamn bright, like sunshine, even when she's not sure who the girl truly is. She thinks it probably says something about her that she can't stop thinking about Chuu's legs- the shape of them, the possible softness of her skin, the little bruise. She thinks Chuu is kind at the very least. She remembers how dead and lifeless Chuu looked in her dream, and it scares her for some reason.   
  
So without making a big deal of it, she gets up and goes and sits next to the girl. The smile she receives could stop any amount of rain, to be honest. 

 

*

Yves is sneaking in the library during her sixth night in Eden when she hears a shuffling, and  feels the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She holds onto the edge of the book tightly, hoping to use its hard cover to knock someone out, and at the same time knowing how incredibly futile that is. 

 

“Hello?” she says into the darkness, forcing herself to keep her voice as low and pleasant as possible, just in case it’s one of the younger girls and she can pretend that she was just in the library out of boredom and insomnia, and that she wasn’t hunting through books they’d all been forbidden to read. 

 

Something moves in between the shelves, and Yves catches a glimpse of a skirt. Another student then. The wind turns cold outside, flutters through the open window, and Yves shivers, not sure if its because of the cold or the unnerving sound of leaves rustling in the dark. 

 

The figure moves again. Yves jams the book she’s holding behind one of the shelves at random, mentally calculating how early she’d have to get up to come to the library first thing to return it to its original place. Right now though, she’s going with plan B, which she's going to make work even if her hands are shaking so much she feels like she’s going to fall over. 

 

“Hey” says Chuu, stepping into the moonlight.

 

Yves feels so much relief that she's honestly giddy with it. 

 

“What are you doing here?” She asks, face breaking out into an involuntary smile. 

 

“I just couldn't sleep” says Chuu. 

 

Yves nods, swallowing. “Me too” she says. Relief (and maybe something else) makes her legs shaky. In the back of her mind, she can mentally picture the book just sitting in between the shelves, silently incriminating her. There’s another strong gust of wind and both of them shiver. 

 

“Hey do you want to check out some books I like? To pass the time I mean” suggests Chuu, motioning to the other part of the library, and Yves can't agree fast enough.

 

They end up sitting on the floor leaning next to what’s called “the comic book section”, the marble cold under their bare legs as Chuu flips through pages of brightly coloured drawings, all arranged to make one cohesive story, that she explains earnestly while Yves stares in fascination. She’s never seen anything like this-books just made of the sake of  _ enjoyment,  _ and for little kids too. All the books she’s ever seen and held are instruction manuals for dimension hopping and magic ritual books, dry and dense but purely necessary. Chuu sounds happy, but a little bit wistful as she explains how the hero once had cancer, but an experimental treatment means he’s now immortal, and he’s an expert in martial arts now. 

 

“I love how funny Deadpool is more than anything though” she says, tracing the blank white squares in between each photo. “He really likes pancakes and he makes terrible decisions, but it always works out for him. And in comics whenever anyone dies, they just come back to life later. Thor once died twelve times”

 

“Thor?” asks Yves, confused. 

 

Chuu looks up, eyes crinkling in mirth. “He’s another hero I like” she explains. “Oh” says Yves, the back of her neck burning red. There’s no reason to feel embarrassed, it’s obvious that between them Chuu’s the one who’s had the privilege of being there longer, but in the course of their night the comic book has migrated to both their laps and their bare knees are touching underneath it. Chuu’s hair is tickling her cheek from how close they both were to pore over the book together, and Yves is acutely, stupidly aware of every single point of contact, how Chuu kind of smells a little strawberries for some reason, and how her hands feel odd and shaky. 

 

If Chuu feels equally awkward, then she doesn’t make any mention of it. Maybe Chuu never feels awkward, she’s Eden’s golden child after all. Or maybe being so bright and happy could be its own shield, she wonders to herself, so that no would ever notice if you were nervous-

 

Chuu’s hand slips from the book to cover her own, and she stops breathing. 

 

In the moonlight, in their night dresses, Chuu looks so soft and pretty. Like a real person too, from the way her eyes betray a tiny bit of her nervousness, the freckles dotting her face, the softness of hands from where it covers Yves’ own. Her wrists are thin and dainty, fingers long, and Yves knows she’s staring, noticing hyper specific details that are way too odd, but she can’t stop, with the way her chest is seizing up. 

 

Chuu looks young and soft and innocent, and everything Yves has been running away from for so long. 

 

“Yves” whispers Chuu, so close that Yves can feel the warm breath on her face. “Can I kiss you?”

 

Yves nods, but its a reflex, a subconscious twitch in between moving closer and closer to Chuu. She’s never been the type to over exaggerate anything, but she feels so compelled right that moment, like this kiss was as inevitable as planets colliding, cities being swallowed whole, the sun giving away to the night. She can almost believe in the heat of the moment that there’s something sacred about this, that her whole life had built up to kissing a girl on the floor in the moonlight and that nothing that mattered would ever happen again.  

 

When their lips finally meet, Chuu’s mouth is so soft. Yves feels a shock from the contact after so long of being deprived of touch, when skin hadn’t felt skin in so long it didn’t feel real anymore. Chuu wraps her arms around Yves’s waist and in response she makes a desperate, choked off sound, and pulls her even closer so that Chuu is practically sitting on her lap, comic book getting knocked off and ending up on the floor. Chuu kisses her harder and Yves lets her, licks the roof of her mouth desperately, cups her cheeks as she ends up pressed against the bookshelf, another comic book toppling off of it. It’s not innocent even if it is a first kiss, instead its desperate and intense and messy. 

 

She doesn’t know where restrained, lifeless Yves went after so long, as she keens into Chuu’s mouth and kisses her again and again until her lips feel raw and swollen. She wraps her arms around Chuu’s waist and holds her even tighter, irrationally terrified that any second now the other girl was going to leave, going to realise that this was a mistake and push her away, going to disappear like everyone else despite her best efforts. Chuu’s hands come to rest on the bra straps on her back, and Yves doesn’t even realise her hands have crept under Chuu’s skirt until the other girl gasps in response and pulls away. 

 

They just sit there, panting and staring at each other. Chuu looks glassy eyed and messy, her hair significantly more ruffled than she did a minute ago, and Yves knows she probably looks worse, from how hard she’s breathing as she comes down from her high. Despite that though, Chuu doesn’t make a single attempt to move from where she is, the sound of their ragged breathing deafening in the silence of the library. 

 

“We should go” says Yves finally, voice coming out hoarse. 

 

[That night, she says bye to Chuu and immediately runs back to the library to hide the book. Alone, the moonlight almost seems ominous, and she can almost swear that the book was in a slightly different position when she left it there, almost like someone had found it and immediately jammed it back in place]

 

*

On the 30th day in Eden, they receive news that one entire dimension had collapsed. 

 

_ It just happened so suddenly _ , says the teacher over a breakfast of waffles and thick, syrupy honey. Yves watches the liquid stain her plate and says nothing, hands shaking slightly. There are soft titters in the dining room as all of the girls start whispering about the literal loss of culture, the disappearance of cities, the loss of human life. Chuu stares out of the window, not eating, and says nothing. It makes Yves wonder if Chuu carries her own kind of sadness deep down. She looks so tired and defeated, sunlight catching the wisps of hair in her bangs. 

 

*

They’re kissing, once again, this time in Chuu’s room, warm grey sheets pooling underneath them,  (Yves had been surprised to see that Chuu had transformed her room in something soft and homely instead of the silk sheets and silver fastenings that every other room had, but then the other girl had made a funny sort of exhale, and then her lips were on hers, and then she’d magically forgotten) and Yves’s skirt rides up a little bit. In the bright sunlight, Chuu still looks magnificent, hair slightly mussed, skin glowing, but Yves should have been careful, she thinks later, as Chuu’s expression had fallen slightly on seeing the puckered skin, the long white scar tracing her thigh. 

 

In the light of the day, there was no place for Yves to hide. 

 

“What happened?” she asked softly, brow furrowed as she traces the damaged skin tenderly with her finger tip, careful not to press too hard. 

 

_ Lie,  _ says the automatic reflex in her head, adrenaline shooting through her system almost like she was back in the very moment she got it. She remembers the lady’s eyes the most, wide and bloodshot, with desperation as hunger had hollowed out most of her face. It had been a second too late when she felt, rather than noticed the knife scraping her thigh, the other woman far too weak to cause any damage. She’d run after that, blood dripping onto her skirt, heart pounding like it was trying to force its way out of her chest. She’d run and left a body hunched over the table, old, frail and on the verge of death, but still undeserving of what she had done to it.

 

Yves gives a half convincing smile and presses the pad of her thumb against Chuu’s lips instead. It gives away under her hands, so plush and soft and inviting. “It’s a long story” she says, surprising herself with the not quite lie coming out of her mouth, “and its not something I want to relive”

 

Chuu doesn’t ask questions. Instead, she cradles Yves hand in her own and kisses her knuckles with the kind of quiet acceptance that almost takes Yves’s breath away. They don’t really speak after that, too focused on kissing during the short break they have in between classes, but Chuu makes sure to keep her hand loosely curled around Yves’s knee instead, never creeping higher.   

 

*

 

Yves knows what she did. She knows better than anyone else, when she wakes up in cold sweat, all the places her hands have been, all the pain she’s caused. It doesn’t stop her from gently brushing Chuu’s bangs away from her face to kiss her forehead, doesn’t make her lean away when Chuu leans forward and presses her lips against hers. She wraps her arms around Chuu’s waist, feels the fragile body of skin and bones, one resounding heartbeat pressed against hers and silently asks for forgiveness as she lets her mouth trail lower and lower, feels Chuu shudder and moan under her. 

 

*

On the 20 th day, the rest of the girls-including Chuu-go out for a picnic.

It’s a rare treat, a surprise since there’s been an unexpected lull in news of the war outside and the teachers have decided that some kind of understated celebrations are in order.

They don’t do really do anything special per se, just wrap up their usual food in dainty white napkins and place them in a wicker basket, but Yves looks down at their lunch and realises, with sudden clarity, that maybe this is what it feels like to be privileged, to have enough food to eat day in and day out, and to have enough time and freedom to suddenly decide to do something special today. They pack more bottles of water than anyone needs (she remembers, with sudden, desperate clarity, being dehydrated, willing to do anything for glass of water), change into their hardier shoes (she remembers limping to her shelter once holding a sandal that had literally exploded into three pieces but being far too stubborn to throw it away) and then they head off into the cool green meadows.

The sky, which had been stormy grey the whole week has cleared up, and everywhere she looks she can see nothing but beautiful, piercing blue, fluffy white clouds thick enough to be cotton candy (she can’t remember the taste of cotton candy no matter how hard she tries), and a pleasant breeze, slight enough not to make the day chilly and cool enough to make sure they don’t overheat. They settle down in a spot of shade in between two trees, and most of the girls run off to chase each other in the forest, shrieking and giggling, skirts disappearing in out of view. Yves finds a spot in between the tree’s roots, far away from the party so that they’re nothing more than background noises, and squints at her notes. She’s so close. She just needs one more breakthrough.

“Hey” says Chuu’s voice. Yves looks up and to see her with her usual soft smile, eyes crinkling up with joy.

“Do you want to play a game?” asks Yves, eyeing the direction in which she knew the other girls were off doing god knows what.

“I noticed you sitting quietly by yourself” says Chuu in response and before Yves can open her mouth to say  _ I’m fine by myself thank you  _ she adds “Can I join you?”

Yves nods, confused as Chuu settles down next to her, careful not to stain her socks . “I’m not very good company right now, I kind of just want to finish my notes” says Yves apologetically, fear prickling her. She and Chuu don’t really acknowledge each other outside their quiet little rendezvous; Yves assumes its because Chuu already keeps to herself anyway and given how powerful she is, jealousy can be a very dangerous thing, and Yves hasn’t said anything because everyday she’s conscious of the fact that she’s an outsider intruding on their careful world of hierarchies and most of all, she’s genuinely afraid of how much she likes Chuu.

Chuu settles down comfortably on the root next to her, and Yves expects her to initiate conversation but instead she looks perfectly content to just sit like that, head tipped back to admire the leaves growing on the trees. Yves closes her notebook, too nervous to show her notes to anyone, and both of them just sit in silence on the beautiful summers day, listening to the sounds of leaves rustling and the shouts of laughter somewhere far away.

“I’m really glad I met you” says Chuu suddenly, out of the blue. “I don’t believe in fate or anything, but I’m really thankful that you ended up here with me”.

Chuu looks soft most of the time, and sweet and earnest when she speaks, but now she looks so  _ vulnerable _ . It’s not even really a confession, but Yves knows how hard it can be to acknowledge something as strange and intangible as happiness. Another version of herself would be pulling the other girl closer, but she hesitates. 

_ Don’t respond to that. Change the topic. Say something else.  _ Screams the rational part of her brain, but Yves gives in, because she’s always giving in around Chuu. “I’m really happy I met you” she says in shaky voice, and  _ good god, why does Chuu even put up with her she’s an awful mess,  _ but she takes a deep breath and tries again, says, “you make me happy”

Chuu smiles, and leans into kiss her softly on a beautiful summers day. Yves gives in again.

  
  


*

 

The mission was simple: destroy Eden, no matter what it takes. 

 

Here’s the truth: Eden is a lie, a parasite. It’s a manipulation of time and space that shouldn’t exist thanks to deep, dark magic, and all its wealth, beauty and safety comes from the fact that it bleeds other worlds dry, sucks all the life out of its plants and people to feed their own. It’s beauty, but beauty at a terrible, awful price and Yves has seen too many worlds on the timeline collapse and crash thanks to its force, families and friends torn apart thanks to some mysterious person playing god. 

 

[She doesn’t like to dwell on things, but sometimes she lies awake at night and thinks about Vivi. Beautiful, innocent Vivi with her heart ripped out and her eyes cold and emotionless; a horrific result of the violent fluctuations in the timeline. She thinks of Choerry in her weakest moments, baby faced and far too young for this kind of suffering, eternally trapped in between parallel worlds, able to maybe visit but never to stay, cut off from her closest friends. It hardens her, makes her far more bitter than she ever thought possible. Nothing about these girls can justify the pain that their society has inflicted on someone else.]

 

[ _ Except maybe _ , whispers the tender, irrational part of her heart, the bit she’s never managed to kill yet,  _ Chuu _ .  _ Maybe Chuu is the exception _ ]

 

On the third week, she finds out what will actually destroy Eden, and then she spends an entire lying awake and crying quietly, tears dripping down her face and onto the silk sheets. 

 

Yves had a theory long ago that there was no way every part of Eden was equally powerful; there had to be weak spots in the link that could be exploited in order to bring this system down. What she didn’t consider was how Eden was created in the first place, how the anomaly in the timeline existed. 

 

And then she finds out: sacrifice. There’s a reason that no one knows the mysterious entity that created Eden, and it has to do with the biggest weak spot in the system which is a cliff off the edge of the palace they live in, just a ten minute walk away but also brimming with dark magic and the kind of sadness that’ll bring you down for weeks, possibly years. She’d always assumed that the pain had to do with all the suffering that Eden feasted on spilling through, but the actual story is the girl who actually ended up creating Eden, no older than seventeen, who had stood on the edge, whispered a curse that no one had been allowed to invoke for thousands of years, and then pushed her friend off. And then, after ten more minutes, and another bit of dark magic that had long been forbidden, she’d jumped off herself. 

 

Yves lies awake and wonders what it is people that drives them to something like that. What it takes to invite someone out with the intent to murder them, to stand on the grass with the wind in your hair and say goodbye to someone even though they don’t know it yet. She wonders if the first girl had started off as someone nice, someone who Vivi would have liked, or Choerry would have liked as an older sister before something in her life must have warped out of control and turned her into that person. 

 

What compels people to do this? What did it take to look at someone you might have loved, or even someone you might have hated, and to end their life like it was nothing? The pit, as far as she can tell, is gigantic and endless, a giant canyon more than anything else. A teenager must be tiny compared it. Would have been like snapping an elastic band. Snuffing out a matchstick. How did you justify ruining so many lives, she wonders, feeling anguish build up in her chest. What had to happen to you for you to see human life so callously and casually, just exchange thousands of them for a few like  it was nothing? 

 

And then to stand on the same ledge and jump. To know the full extent of what was going to happen to you and then do it anyway. To be swallowed whole by things are

 

At some point, when staring at the ceiling is too much to handle, and she buries her head deep into the satin sheets she knows Eden isn’t supposed to own, she toys with the idea that maybe Eden was meant to be a utopia. Maybe that girl, whoever it was, didn’t know the full extent of what they were doing. Perhaps there was only desperation and good intentions, which have always been an awful combination. Perhaps in her last moments she thought it was worth it, if someone was safe and happy, even if she couldn’t be.

 

War drives everyone insane, warps their moral compasses. There are no heroes. Yves knows, because tomorrow, she’s going to do the very same thing to Chuu. 

 

[It’s the only way, she reminds herself as she finally gives up on sleep and locks herself in the bathroom instead. She stares at her face in the mirror, pale and haggard despite all the good food she’s been eating lately and she finally breaks out into a wave of tears so strong she can’t stand. She pulls her knees to her chest and cries on the pristine bathroom floor instead, as she thinks of Chuu’s smiling face, her soft hair, the way her lips had parted underneath her as they’d kissed late night. Chuu.  _ Chuu _ . No one else in Eden is strong enough to cancel out the magic, she’s the only one with calibre. It’s the only way]

 

[Chuu]

 

Once, when she was a kid, her mother warned her: bodies weren’t elastic bands. They didn’t stretch and then snap back into place when you put strain on them. She used to think that there would be a day her heart broke enough to finally give out, after her parents, after Vivi, after Choerry, and now after this, but when she’s done crying, she’s still alive and breathing, and she forces herself to get up and go back to bed. 

 

[Chuu, wrapping her arms around Yves’s waist so tightly she can feel the other girl’s heart pound. That wouldn’t happen anymore, if the plan went right]

 

How awful it is sometimes, to survive things.  

  
  
  


*

On the 40th day, they go for a walk.

Chuu is wearing a black blouse with a lace collar, long brown hair tied back into one big pony tail, and a red skirt. Her socks are white and knee high, her Mary Janes are quickly becoming full of grass stains as she kicks each stone on the way childishly, skipping and talking about nothing in particular in a giggly voice. Yves follows behind her, hands shoved in her pocket to hide how she’s clenching them into fists, blinking periodically to hide her tears. She forces herself to look at Jiwoo though, to take in every detail and catalogue everything about her. She’ll remember this dress. She’ll remember Chuu’s little freckles. She’ll remember what it felt like to hold her, to hear her laugh on this day, and she’ll remind herself of that every single time she thinks of herself as hero, and every time she ever comes close to falling in love again.

They reach the pit and both of them go quiet as they take in the heavy, dark atmosphere, sensing the pull of something heavy and tragic right underneath their feet.

“Oh wow” says Yves stupidly, unable to hide how her voice wavers. “I didn’t expect it to be as sad as this”

It’s true though. Yves thought she knew pain but the feelings emanating in the pit, tugging at her gut, calling her forward, is heaviness and emptiness so big that it feels ancient, hollow, too much for a single person to ever carry. Something horrible happened here. From how rigidly Chuu’s standing, her shoulders stiff and her hands clenched into fists, like she’s bracing herself for something, Yves guesses she feels the same way.

She takes a step back. Chuu doesn’t even seem to notice, standing on the edge, her eyes fixated on the pit below. Perfect. Yves can barely bear what she’s about to do, but she can’t bear the pain of this place anymore. Far better to just get it over with.

The winds flutters through their hair. Sunlight feels warm and gentle on their backs. The grass sways back and forth. Yves takes a step forward.

“You don’t love me” says Chuu softly.

It sounds heartbroken, tiny, but honest. Her back is rigid, eyes focused on the ground below them.

Yves nearly stumbles. “Chuu-Chuu what?” she says stupidly, giving an unconvincing grin. “I don’t-I don’t understand what you’re talking about”

Chuu turns around, and her eyes are watery, reflecting the harsh bright sunlight and looking like a thousand different colours. She’s exquisite. Somehow though, looking at her sad is far worse pain than what Yves could have imagined.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” Chuu asks. If it wasn’t for the slight hitches in the her voice, it would be dead calm, rehearsed almost. “You really think I didn’t notice you sneaking around the library at night, taking notes and hiding them? You think I didn’t notice the you ignored me for at first, but then the last few days you were suddenly all over me?”

She takes a step forward and Yves steps back instinctively. Chuu looks so much older like this, so much more powerful. For the first time, Yves feels afraid.

“You don’t belong in Eden” says Chuu calmly, “you’re hiding something. You don’t love me. You need me for something”

Yves can’t think of a single response, right when she needs to the most. All the excuses on her tongue just disappear into thin air as it hits her how hard she underestimated Chuu, how stupid she was, how she’s failed all of her friends even on a suicide mission.

Instead, a dam cracks open in her chest. Instead, she says “I love you” and starts sobbing.

She hits the ground on that beautiful summer’s day, feels the wet, tickling feeling of the long grass, the smell of plants as she falls forward on her knees, tears pouring out of her. She doesn’t look up, can’t look up, but she feels Chuu’s arms wrap around her and drag her forward, feels the dirt stain her pristine white socks and leave stains on her knees, and she starts babbling hysterically as the other girl pulls her closer.

“I love you” she sobs like the trainwreck she is, utterly pathetic. “I love you so much and I’m so sorry and I’m sorry I love you and I need to do this Chuu you don’t understand, my friends-I love you I love you I love you I don’t deserve you I just can’t-”

Chuu doesn’t make any indication she understands, and in a way Yves is grateful, because it means the other girl is still willing to tighten her arms around her as she rocks her back and forth and stroke her hair away from her face.

“I love you too” Chuu whispers back. Yves looks up at her, vision blurry with tears, and sees that Chuu’s crying too, tears dripping onto the her black shirt. God they’re such small, breakable girls, crying in the bright sunlight. The world should have never happened to them.

“And also-” Chuu says, sniffing and then continuing, “I have a secret too”

Yves stares at her in shock.

“I’m not here for Eden” says Chuu, and honestly it makes sense, the way the two of them never fit in like the others, Chuu’s real disinterest in the other students. “I’m here because one of my friends-one of them got caught in between the timelines. And she’s suffering”

Yves feels like there’s something significant about that last bit and she can feel the faint strands of recognition bleeding through, something obvious that she’s not grasping. It can’t be Choerry, that much is for sure. But is there something else she’s supposed be knowing?

“And-” 

She’s got a funny look on her face and Yves realises with a shock that its the same ugly determination she sees in the mirror, the kind where loss has warped you into some sort of stranger that justifies horrible things for the greater good. And then she realises.

“Chuu” she manages to choke out before the other girl grabs her by the shoulders, unnatural strength coursing through her veins. “Someone has to fall for the place to collapse” Chuu says, voice sounding like gravel, tears staining her cheeks, “I’m sorry” she adds.

And then she pushes Yves over the cliff, right into the pit.

There’s a second where Yves is weightless, tipping forward, and then a boom like a supernova. Then she falls.  

“No” says Yves, feeling worlds and universes collide, then crack and fall apart, the fragile structure of Eden crashing and burning. She did this.  _ She did this.  _ “I don’t want to say goodbye” she gasps out, “Not now”.  _ Not like this. _

There’s no response. Above her, Chuu stares, impassive, pale and haggard but determined as Yves continues falling, feels wind whistling in her ears and rushing through her air. “Chuu” Yves shouts out the best she can.”Chuu-I didn’t mean- _ Chuu _ ” she screams one last time, anguished, and then the other girl disappears from view as she falls down, down,  _ down _ .

Around her, the universe gets made anew and Eden ceases to exist.  

 

*

Dimension #34

“You alright, dear?” says a voice above her. 

She jerks back to consciousness and then groans, feels a pounding headache behind her temples. Great. “‘’Ello?” she responds groggily, struggling to crack her eyes open.

When she does manage to, there’s a nurse standing over her bed, and the sounds of hospital machines beeping off in the distance.

The nurse, a woman greying black hair and deep eye bags, smiles softly. “Hello Soonyoung” she says softly, “do you remember why you’re here?”

She doesn’t.

Car accident, the nurse explained, after she’d been comfortably propped against the pillows (or as comfortable as she can be anyway, every single movement feels like agony, like her insides have been shredded), somewhere in the woods one rainy late night. A driver had skidded to avoid another girl and then hit a tree in her path instead, its a miracle anyone survived, let alone with what appeared to be relatively minor injuries.

There hadn’t been anything to indicate where Soonyoung was going, only what appeared to be a damaged school id on her with her first name.

“Do you remember who you are?” says the nurse gently, though there’s a little bit of hope in her eyes.

Soonyoung shakes her head. She can’t remember anything actually. Where she’s from. Her last name. Her life before this. Even though the nurse tells her otherwise, tries to assure her she’ll recover those memories in no time, there’s something deep down that’s convinced her somehow there never was a past before this, and that she’s been taken apart and put back together in ways she can’t explain. Her head hurts.

“We’ll house you for as long as you need” says the nurse, patting her hand gently. “There’s another girl we’re bringing from the trauma ward here as well. Try and keep each other company”

Soonyoung just nods, which hurts as well. She spends god knows how many hours after that just lying in bed, attempting the tiniest twitches and then immediately wincing. By mide afternoon though, her muscles have loosened up enough for her to stand, and the door opens to reveal someone being wheeled, bandages covering her whole upper torso.

“Hi, I'm Soonyoung” she says, doing her best to sound enthusiastic. The girl turns to her while the nurses are helping her into bed, and Soonyoung can see dark, dark circles under her eyes, a bandaged shoulder, and scratches on her neck. It makes her stomach churn.

“Soonyoung is a pretty name” says the girl in response, blinking under the harsh fluorescent lights.

She shrugs. ‘Its what they told me my name was” she admits, “I lost my memory in the accident”. Then she hesitates. “Do you remember anything?” she asks, not wanting to be rude.

Something dark and remorseful flickers in the other girls. “I do” she admits, and it strikes Soonyoung how much pain that must have been. “I remember everything” she says, and then smiles softly, sadly.

“I think” says Soonyoung suddenly, “that we’ll be good friends”

The other girl smiles again, and this time its so youthful, girlish. Like seeing a whole other person hiding in it underneath the shitty fluorescent lights, the drab colours, the muffled sounds of speaking from the other rooms.

“I think so too” she says. 

“I’m Jiwoo by the way” she adds. 

**Author's Note:**

> Anyway idk why the hell I stay up writing this stuff when femslash recieves like -3535 attention akhfkshfkhs i hate myself so much!!! Anyway I'm sominbiased on tumblr and @sominbiased1 on twitter come say hi


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